Saturday, February 27, 2016

Maybe that headline isn't fair. Christie, who has no chance of being elected to anything in New Jersey ever again, and will need gainful employment in after next year, might be angling for the Attorney General job. Although... would a Senate-- any Senate-- confirm the Bridgegate guy? Dunno, but his endorsement moment with Herr Trumpf (at the bottom) was better than the Palin one.Since Thursday night's Texas debate, Michael Steele has been repeating things along this theme: "There was nothing presidential about that debate. Americans got to see kids on the school playground." Someone else said the debate reminded her of "three year olds fighting over who gets to use the monkey bars." And it spilled into Friday when Herr Trumpf and Rubio really got into it. Rubio, who Alan Grayson referred to as "an attack poodle" after watching him barking at Trumpf Thursday night, seems to have agreed to let his campaign hire a comedy writer so he could fight Trumpf on equal footing. Remember, the Kochs have said that unless Rubio went after Trumpf personally and brought him down, there would be none of that legendary and deployable $900 million flowing his way. So Rubio is trying. Will Americans even vote if we wind up with two candidates as unappetizing and embarrassing as Trumpf and Hillary? Will it excite anyone that the pig-faced Bridgegate guy running as Trumpf's VP, while Hillary picks, Julian Castro, an unknown and unaccomplished former mayor of San Antonio who has spent the past half year being tutored... so he could speak Spanish, are added to the mix?

So now the Republican Party primary is degenerating into an argument over who's more likely to punch someone in the face and who's the real tough guy. (I guess Rubio considers himself to have more street cred because he was once a coke runner for his brother-in-law and was later arrested selling his bootie to older gay men in Coconut Grove after he flunked out of school. That's tough, right? But he says Trumpf isn't: "This is a con-job where he is going to Americans who are struggling, Americans who are hurting, and he’s implying, 'I'm fighting for you' because he’s a tough guy. A tough guy? This guy inherited $200 million, he’s never faced any struggle.The other day, he told somebody, a protestor, 'I'm going to punch you in the face.' Donald Trump has never punched anyone else in the face. Donald Trump was the first guy to beg for Secret Service protection."

Bloomberg reporter Sahil Kapur reminded his readers that Christie, aside from frightening Rubio, has opened the door for other establishment types to jump in the Trumpf bandwagon. Not everyone agreed though. A couple of Jeb aides attacked the stout governor. David Kochel: "New lesson kids: sometimes, the best option for the fat kid is to just hand his lunch money over to the bully!" And Tim Miller went down a similar low road: "Like Trump, Chris Christie is a pathetic, corrupt man with a tiny ego. I'm sure they bonded discussing their insecurities over a big meal." So not only has the Republican primary devolved into the candidates calling each other names on a level that would embarrass a junior high school student, but now we're going to have a season of establishment Republicans fat-shaming Christie!

This is beyond silly now... as though a contest for the presidency is made for late night TV hosts to have something to talk about to the sleep-deprived. Trumpf, who is trying to make a mantra out of "once a choker always a choker," is now taking every opportunity to obliterate Rubio. He declared on Friday that Rubio will not be considered for the running mate position. Really; watch:

Rubio responded with his own effort-- or the comedy writer's-- at re-branding Herr Trumpf: "Friends do not let friends vote for con artists"... and then quickly tried to make the case that Trumpf is-- wait for it-- sweaty. Yes, sweatier than Rubio himself. Rubio is now totally in the sty, intent on wrestling the pig. And I am not kidding! Just watch this clip from Friday morning:

Rubio's comedy writer gave him a line he rehearsed and delivered well at the debate too-- something about how if Trumpf hadn't inherited $200 million from his father, he'd be on the streets of Manhattan selling fake watches now with the Somalis and Kenyans. It may or may not be technically true-- about how much Herr got from his father-- but it makes the point of "otherness" that Rubio must convey if he's too make a dent in Herr Trumpf's armor. He flubbed a different line though-- the one about how Trumpf must have hired foreign workers to handle his twitter account, evidenced by all the misspellings, but poor Rubio got all flummoxed the whole thing broke down in he telling. He went home and studied it again and he finally managed to pull it off in the speeches he gave Friday in Texas and Oklahoma. Good boy, Marco! I think that was the line that inspired Grayson to write "What is the best thing that you can say about Marco Rubio?

Let me think for a minute...He’s well-groomed.That’s all I can think of. Marco Rubio is well-groomed.We know this because he used his Republican Party of Florida credit card to pay for his back-waxing. Seriously. I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.

But what Christie made up to justify his bizarre endorsement of Herr Trumpf was far more of a stretch. Watch this silliness: